Episode 155 – Making It in the Art World by Brainard Carey / Preparing the Budget Sheet

Before we met with the curators and assistants again about our show, we prepared a budget, and since we are visual artists, we made a picture on a piece of 8 ½ x 11 paper with a pen. We drew one big circle on the paper, and then inside that circle we drew several more circles. On the edge of the big circle we wrote “950K,” meaning $950,000. We were guessing at an ideal figure but stayed under one million to make it seem very calculated and not too over-the-top. Now on the inner circles we wrote other amounts that were the numbers that added up to 950K. There was a book we wanted to make, the cost of building it all, and salaries of people to help us. There was one circle that said 22K, and that was titled “Installation Cost.” The rest of the costs were mostly for a film we wanted to make of it all.

When we went to the meeting where we were supposed to talk about the budget, we brought our sheet of paper with circles on it outlining the grand budget. As I pointed to the first number, 950K, for the whole production, there were audible gasps. I said, “Don’t worry, we can raise some of the money.” And then I pointed to the circle that said 22K, and said, “That is what we need to mount the show.” Quickly, the top curator said, “We can’t give you more than five thousand, that’s the most we have.” Then the other curator said, “I could probably get five thousand as well.” At that, I said, “Very good, we can work with that.” And in the end, the museum did give us ten thousand to do the show, which was a lot of money for them, and for us as well.

Ask for the Moon

You see, the method here is to ask for much more money than you might actually need, and when you do that, you will find out what the maximum budget for the museum is. In this case, the most the museum could give was ten thousand dollars. And that is the story of how we got that show and began funding it. The next part of that show was how we got the additional funding. In this case, we had some great luck through perseverance. Apple donated equipment generously to the show, as did companies like Bose and Gibson, to name a few, along with private patrons. I will write more on sponsorship and how we got those companies to get behind this show, but first let’s wrap up what happened here.

I began by writing a cold letter to a museum curator and asking for a meeting. At the meeting, after giving three proposals and asking where to exhibit them, I was pointed in the direction I wanted, which was to a top curator. Then, with careful planning, my wife and I were able to talk about the show further, develop a budget, and get the museum to commit to a certain amount of support and a date and time for the show. It is a clear process that you could follow. In the next chapter, I will explain how we got funding for the show.